It was heartening to come across the excellent research done by three brilliant scholars with their profound insights into the exciting fields of cars and urban mobility. The three have life-long involvement with these subjects: Dr Venkat Sumantran, Chairman of Celeris Technologies, has over three decades of experience heading auto companies in the United States, Europe, and Asia, Dr Charles Fine, Chrysler LGO Professor at MIT Sloan and the Founding President of the Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur and Dr David Gonsalvez, CEO and Rector at MIT’s Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation.

Sumantran headed R&D organisations for GM in USA and Europe, before returning to serve as Executive Director at Tata Motors, reporting to Ratan Tata. He led the development of the Tata Nano and the Tata Ace. Subsequently, as Vice Chairman of Ashok Leyland he developed another successful LCV – the Dost.

Fired by his interest in the future of car and mobility, Dr. Sumantran joined hands with the two MIT professors to do this extensive research spread over three years. The result is the monumental work Faster, Smarter, Greener- the Future of the Car and Urban Mobility , published by the MIT Press, that traces the evolution of the car through the 20th century, describes the dramatic changes taking place in urbanisation and its impact on the automobile: “city administrators are shifting from designing cities for cars to designing cities for people,” say the authors.

Average use of an owned car is 4 per cent!

The average use of a vehicle is just 4 per cent and for the balance 96 per cent it is parked. The authors point to the sharing economy motivating consumers to shift from being owners of assets to be users of services. They propose a CHIP architecture - Connected, Heterogeneous, Intelligent and Personalised - to tackle the future of mobility.

Highlights of the research study were presented through lectures in cities spread across the globe including New York and London. The 18th such was presented by Sumantran at the Chennai

International Centre through a discussion with Dr. Nagendra Palle, CEO, Mahindra First Choice Wheels. The presentation provided the salient features of the exciting evolution of transportation. Extensive case studies of the several innovations that were aided by information technology and the smartphone were presented in lucid terms. With the world rapidly moving towards urbanisation, with myriad problems of commuting by personalised transport and with the perhaps irreversible damage caused to the environment through toxic emissions, major shifts are taking place in tackling the future of the automobile, say the authors.

A son of this soil, Sumantran related these tectonic shifts to the ground situation in Chennai. We are only too familiar with the vast disconnect among different modes of transport: three different train services – the old suburban system, the elevated mass rapid transit system and the new Chennai metro rail-augmented by the metro bus transport system and a variety of taxis - the share taxi, Uber and Ola, the ubiquitous auto-rickshaws... All these compete fiercely. The much needed coordination among urban transport authorities is yet to be in position and with the city relentlessly walking farther from the coast in different directions, the metro also lacks adequate last mile connectivity.

We present excerpts from Sumatran’s evocative address. There are precious lessons for the rapidly urbanising Indian cities and automobile manufacturers to learn from this masterpiece and nudge policymakers to move towards sustainable and affordable commuting.

THIS book was developed over three years of extensive research. It has been written for global relevance with many learnings and interviews from USA, Europe and Asia. It also targets a wide spectrum of readers with interests in the auto industry, urban planning and digital technologies. There is a lot of Chennai in this book, and that makes me proud.

Transforming mobility architecture

Today there is a lot of discussion on the world of mobility. Sometimes it’s about cities, regions or countries that are looking at transforming their mobility architecture. We notice automakers talking of transforming product offering with electric vehicles. There is a lot of news on new mobility solution providers like Uber and Ola going through their own set of issues. Focus on urban mobility is reaching a crescendo. We are at the cusp of rather pivotal changes. Akio Toyoda avers that for automakers, this is not an issue of being a winner or loser; this is an issue of actually surviving or not surviving. This is an era in which correct answers are unknown. This book will hopefully shed some light and suggest some possible courses.

The very urban century

What is causing this massive change? To start with, we have to acknowledge that we are living in an increasingly urban world. At the start of the 20th century 1 out of

every 6 inhabitants was urban; by the end of that century 3 out of 6 were urban; by 2050 4 out of 6 will be urban. We are going to deal with mobility in a highly urban world with denser population concentrations.

Friedman’s “flatter” world is also becoming a spikier world. Not only are we becoming an urban world, we are having people agglomerating to preferred population centres. If you are in IT, you want to be in Bangalore or Palo Alto. If you are a financial analyst, you want to be in New York, London or Hong Kong. We are creating a concentration of people and this is a very natural phenomenon. There are gains for individuals through wider and richer social and workplace networks and efficiencies for organisations through dynamic social and economic benefits out of this kind of agglomeration. There are gains for individuals through wider and richer social and workplace networks and efficiencies for organisations through dynamic labour markets .

Most of India has relatively high population density. Our Tier-One and Tier-Two cities are rapidly absorbing satellite townships. As we plan for future mobility in India, we have to reckon with this factor.

Impact of cities

The fifty largest global cities account for a land area of around two per cent; house 55 per cent of global population; generate 85 per cent of GDP and 60 per cent of CO2 emissions, while consuming 78 per cent of energy. This is where much of economic activity is happening and where mobility demands are rapidly growing.

However, many recent updates on global climate are alarming. In the context of the Paris Climate Accord, we have already exceeded 1.2 degrees of global warming. The threshold of two degrees is not very far off. We have higher incidences of hurricanes with unusual fury and devastation. Urbanisation may actually help to alleviate this pressure on CO2. In spite of having higher per capita income, high-density Manhattan has a lower per capita CO2 emission than many other parts of USA. Interestingly, it is transportation which is one of the most significant contributors to lower CO2. Very few people in New York own a car. They are highly dependent on public transit and subways; they walk and they commute to work with so many other modes.

The love affair with smartphones

I belong to the generation that had a love affair with cars. From an early age we were fascinated with cars – they were simultaneously a mobility vehicle, a fun toy and a status symbol. Yet, this love affair is proving very expensive. In the age when many countries are happy to report a 2 per cent GDP growth, the cumulative effect of degraded air quality, traffic fatalities and injuries and traffic congestion is sapping global economy anywhere between 6 and 10 per cent of GDP.

The younger generation now has a new love affair-with smart phones. To them, this device provides mobility, connectivity, as well as a window to social interactions. So this is a shift in cultural attitudes and preferences and this is probably going to accelerate the speed with which we see mobility transform.

EV not a zero carbon emission vehicle!

To address environmental impact, carmakers around the world have announced a slew of new electric cars. Many people assume that an electric car is a zero-emission vehicle. An electric car has zero tail-pipe emissions, but it is not a “zero carbon emission vehicle,” because usually, carbon is combusted somewhere in the grid to generate electricity. Even if we all convert to electric cars, for a grid like India’s with a fair degree of fossil fuel feeding the grid, we would probably make no more than 20-25 per cent reduction in our CO2 footprint for mobility. So, while an electric vehicle will undoubtedly address the problem of tail pipe emissions, it alone will not go very far in lowering our carbon footprint.

The very high subsidy on cars!

Our current automobile architecture involves transporting the average occupant weighing about 60 kg within a vehicle weighing 1200 kg – this is hardly an ideal mobility solution! This is not sustainable. And this scenario is not hypothetical. In Boston, 40 per cent of cars commute with a single occupant. In Los Angeles, the number is close to 75 per cent. Furthermore, even a Maruti Swift occupies nine square metres. In Mumbai, this amount of space costs about Rs 1.3 crore. In New York, it costs Rs 3 crore and more. Buying a car that costs Rs 13 lakh and occupying real estate that costs Rs 1.3 crore is not sustainable either! We often talk about the levels of subsidy in urban public transit that can’t survive without it. We seldom recognise that there is a very high and invisible subsidy enjoyed by car-owners, even after accounting for the fuel tax.

No need to own a car

Today it is seldom necessary to own a car. It can be shared or hired. You have multiple options that allow having access to a vehicle without necessarily being an owner. If you consider the average car around the world, it is used less than 4 per cent of its lifetime. 96 per cent of the time, it is parked, often in areas with expensive real-estate. Taking all of these developments into consideration, the focus of the auto industry is now directed to three pillars: (a) electrification, (b) shared mobility and (c) connected and intelligent cars, including autonomous cars.

Yet, even these steps are inadequate to solve the mobility problem.

CHIP mobility: Connected, Heterogeneous, Intelligent and Personalised

These problems cannot be solved with prescriptive solutions. We need a scalable, globally relevant framework constructed with, what mathematicians call orthogonal vectors, to solve the problems of mobility across the world. It should be a framework we can apply to Chennai, Tokyo or Los Angeles. The vectors embody four attributes: connected, heterogeneous, intelligent and personalised – the CHIP architecture.

Heterogeneous communication landscape

Our current telecommunication landscape is heterogeneous. We communicate with watches, smartphones, tablets, laptops and telepresence. There is a variety of hardware that we use which can be magnified with the varieties of apps, such as Facetime, WhatsApp, Skype, etc. There is no reason why we can’t explore a similar, flexible, highly utilitarian landscape for mobility.

We start with heterogeneity in modes: cycles, cars, buses and metros. A lot of innovation is evident - Bus rapid transit systems (BRT), for example, offer more capacity than buses, but require less investment than metros. UberPool can transport 3-4 persons in a single car. ‘Chariot’ ( a San Francisco - based commuter shuttle service), expands the UberPool concept using 8-12 seater vans.” Such new product configurations and business solutions offer opportunities to reduce traffic congestion, lower carbon emissions and enhance user convenience. Today Uber Pool and Chariot serve as complements to the public transit authority. So we are blurring the divide between what was rigidly a “private” mode or a “public” mode.

Similarly, with car-sharing solutions one can conveniently have the use of a vehicle, for a week, a day or even an hour. Shared assets also improve utilisation of space, resources and capital. With all these, we have a tremendous opportunity to increase the variety of our mobility choices.

Infinite number of options

With such variety at our disposal, we need to have them all connected to complete a journey efficiently. Our Internet is based on a revolution that was triggered by what is called “packet switching.” Communication data is chopped into small “packets” which do not necessarily travel in direct lines from A to B, but rather distributed through multiple nodes and the packets finally get re-assembled at the destination in the right sequence.

In mobility, we similarly have a choice of multiple routes and modes of travel. We can improve connectivity between routes and modes through a combination of physical infrastructure (imagine a transit hub or bus-rail junction) as well as with digital connectivity (for example, summoning an Uber ride with a smartphone when one gets off at a railway station). Increasingly multi-modal urban journeys are proving more convenient, efficient and faster. Many travellers flying in to Delhi prefer to connect to the Metro to reach city destinations. With growing investment in Smart Cities, the integration of sensors and data can lead to improved sustainability, cost-reduction, citizen well-being and economic development.

Add up all the routes and all the various modes and the number of options is infinite. We need help to sort through this maze of information. Fortunately, in our pockets and in our homes, AI tools are increasingly available in devices and apps. When you can bridge this macro data and the intelligence from the city infrastructure and the apps you have on your devices, travel can be rendered efficient and convenient.

Well-articulated social goals

How do we go from theory to practice? The crucial link is achieving alignment to the broader social goals.

The Nobel prize for Economics this year went to Richard H. Thaler for the thesis on “nudge.” Societies motivate people’s behaviour and industry behaviour by encouraging practices that are favourable for society and discouraging behaviours that are adverse to society’s interests. Mexico City is investing in cost-effective and sustainable transit modes and restricting use of personal cars. In Seoul, South Korea transformed a moth-balled railway corridor and created a beautiful pedestrian walkway across the city. The pedestrian highway encourages many commuters to walk to their destination if it is a couple of kilometres rather than using an automobile and getting stuck in traffic.

Nudge can also come from financial and non-financial tools. In Tallinn (capital of Estonia) public transit was made free. In Centennial, in Colorado, they subsidise travel with first-or-last-mile connectivity ride-sharing to public transit, nudging people towards using mass transit. In the Canary Wharf financial district in London, they have limited parking capacity nudging employees to commute by public transit. These measures have helped alleviate congestion and improve urban air quality.

The CHIP architecture works under the assumption that there are well-articulated societal goals. There is thus a critical role for city administrators and policymakers.

Chennai - poor co-ordination among agencies

London also serves as an excellent role model for achieving coordination across multiple city transport authorities - everything from road repair, traffic lights, bus operation and bike-share all operate under one organisational umbrella – Transport for London.

The contrast in Chennai is striking: just when they put up a new pavement, somebody else digs it up and erects new electricity posts or a distribution box. As a new road is laid, somebody else cuts it open. We have very poor coordination among agencies and this hurts the city’s productivity and convenience to residents.

Even as we strive for integrated planning and execution, we must also keep in mind that in future this mobility environment will be incredibly dynamic. As we seek to integrate and orchestrate, we must create an architecture that is open and inviting to new mobility modes and solutions.

Automakers are going to see increasingly new roles in this future. In his interview, Bill Ford said: “it’s clear that the mobility model that we have today will not work tomorrow.” Germany’s Daimler, for example, is investing in mobility services, mobility apps, taxi services, connectivity to public transit, parking applications... Automakers have also begun to realise that in future not only they have to reckon with federal regulations but also with city administrations as they transform their mobility architecture.

An India perspective

One of the questions often raised is: will a CHIP - like mobility architecture be inclusive in a country like India? Many people can’t access or afford the tools we talk about: eg. elderly people not familiar with software tools and apps. The fact is: heterogeneity does not prescribe what THE solution is. In fact, Chennai’s share autos, which often operate outside regulated space, work well in the city, as a valuable and cost-effective secondary and tertiary transit mode. It does not take a whole lot of technology, or public investment for that matter, to operate a fleet of share autos. And you don’t need a smartphone to use one! Such locally relevant modes and services must also be encouraged within the spirit of heterogeneity.

As India prepares for the next decade of growth, mobility demands will grow significantly. The nationwide plan for Smart Cities will involve investments that can be nicely dovetailed with such a future-relevant mobility architecture. With relatively low levels of private vehicle ownership and without having the problems of the West like high levels of jobs dependent on the automobile industry, India has a timely opportunity to disrupt and move to a faster, smarter, greener mobility.

IE, the business magazine from south was launched in 1968 and pioneered business journalism in south. Through the 45 years IE has been focusing on well-presented and well-researched articles. When giants in the industry stumbled to keep pace with the digital revolution, IE stayed affixed embracing technology.